Direct Bodily Empathy — Sound, Signal, Feedback
04 Apr - 11 Oct 2026
Direct Bodily Empathy—Sound, Signal, Feedback explores sound as a material force of consequence in the world. Deep listening—to audible currents and felt vibrations, sirens and noise—is explored by artists as a means of knowledge building and a tool for critically engaging with a planet in crisis.
Spanning the Len Lye Centre, Aotearoa and international artists and collectives examine sonic relationalities and the politics of sound through a range of approaches. These include acoustic ecologies, where sound becomes a speculative tool for sensing and indexing biodiversity and climate volatility; practices of ‘ear witnessing’, where audio material acts as legal evidence towards truth-telling and social justice; and the deployment of sound as a decolonial force, where musical composition unsettles acoustic histories of field recording and the archive, while affirming Indigenous ways of being and knowing.
Staging sonic encounters, artists harness more-than-human co-composers, such as the wind, decomposing fruit, and native birdsong, to amplify the voices of weather systems, sonify carbon flows, and attune with the dawn chorus. Others compose warning sirens as harbingers of ecological feedback loops, or turn up the volume on ancestral rhythms to live by.
Through sound installations and sculptural assemblages, field recordings and experimental films, musical composition and archival interventions, lecture performances and deep-listening experiences, the work in Sound, Signal, Feedback asks, What does a healthy ecosystem sound like? How can sound act as a decolonial gesture? What are the techno-politics of machine listening? What sirens and warnings are needed to survive the future?
If sound can enter the body as waves in ways that other artforms cannot, what kinds of world-making potentialities does vibration have to shift matter and change our social realities? What, can sound do?
Direct Bodily Empathy is a two-part exhibition curated to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Len Lye Centre. The exhibition’s title pays homage to Len Lye’s notion of ‘bodily empathy’, a term that signals sensory attunement, and the transfer of elemental energies. While part one, Sensing Sound, amplified artists’ intentions through sonic structures, resonant objects, and shared vibration, Sound, Signal, Feedback asks us to consider material sound as a transmitter of meaning and an input for action.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a major publication with Perimeter Editions, Melbourne, released in late 2026.
Performance Programme:
Machine Listening’s Environments 12 plays daily in the Len Lye Cinema
at 1:30pm on 4 April – 3 June, 25 June – 26 August, 10 September – 11 October.
Click here for details.
Key Dates:
June 27:
Our official exhibition opening celebration will be accompanied by a series of expanded public programmes and participatory events.
Click here for details.
-
Aura Satz, Sirening (as a verb), 2026. Still from multi-channel video installation HD and 16mm, duration variable. © and courtesy the artist, London
Aura Satz, Sirening (as a verb), 2026. Still from multi-channel video installation HD and 16mm, duration variable. © and courtesy the artist, London
-
Aura Satz, Sirening (as a verb), 2026. Still from multi-channel video installation HD and 16mm, duration variable. © and courtesy the artist, London
Aura Satz, Sirening (as a verb), 2026. Still from multi-channel video installation HD and 16mm, duration variable. © and courtesy the artist, London
-
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Walled Unwalled, 2018. single channel video installation, duration 20 mins and 4 secs. © Lawrence Abu Hamdan, courtesy Maureen Paley, London
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Walled Unwalled, 2018. single channel video installation, duration 20 mins and 4 secs. © Lawrence Abu Hamdan, courtesy Maureen Paley, London
-
Yuko Mohri, Decomposition, 2022. Fruit, speaker, cable, wood, computer, dimensions variable. Installation view in Art & New Ecology, The 5th Floor, Tokyo, 2022. Image: Naoki Takehisa. courtesy of the artist, Project Fulfill Art Space, mother’s tankstation, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, WHITE SPACE
Yuko Mohri, Decomposition, 2022. Fruit, speaker, cable, wood, computer, dimensions variable. Installation view in Art & New Ecology, The 5th Floor, Tokyo, 2022. Image: Naoki Takehisa. courtesy of the artist, Project Fulfill Art Space, mother’s tankstation, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, WHITE SPACE
-
Len Lye, Particles in Space, 1979. 4’, 16mm, b&w, sound. courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation. Digital version by Park Road Post Production and Weta Digital Ltd from material preserved and made available by Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Len Lye, Particles in Space, 1979. 4’, 16mm, b&w, sound. courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation. Digital version by Park Road Post Production and Weta Digital Ltd from material preserved and made available by Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Opening Day Programme:
Join us for an expansive opening weekend celebration.
Across two days, a series of lively public programmes invites you into deeper, embodied encounters with the exhibition, offering in-depth activations that move beyond observation and into spaces of critical thinking and direct, relational engagement with the artworks.
Saturday 27 June:
9.45am - 11.15am
Curator and artist tour: sound as a medium — acoustic ecologies and alternative energy with Curator Anna Briers accompanied by artist Simon Ingram and Phil Dadson from artist collective Weather Cry.
Location: Ngāmotu House | Click here for details.
11.30am - 12.45pm
Composing with Decomposition: a fermentation series after Yuko Mohri.
Location: Todd Energy Learning Centre | Bookings required | Click here for details.
1.30pm - 2.05pm
Environments 12 (2023) a sound installation by Machine Listening.
Location: Len Lye Centre Cinema | Click here for details.
3.00pm - 4.15pm
Sirening (as a verb): Aotearoa Chapter: a conversation and performance with Aura Satz, Horomona Horo, and Erin Matariki Carr moderated by Tendai Mutambu.
Location: Len Lye Centre Cinema | Bookings required | Click here for details.
4.30pm - 5.30pm
Environmentality a lecture-performance by Machine Listening.
Location: Len Lye Centre Cinema | Bookings required | Click here for details.
Sunday 28 June:
10.00am - 1.00pm
Konvolute B: Environments a participatory workshop by Machine Listening.
Location: Todd Energy Learning Centre | Bookings required | Click here for details.
10.30am - 12.00pm
Toi ma te whānau | Family Art - Special: art-making in the gallery.
Location: Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre